The Best Science Fiction of the Year 1 by Terry Carr

In Joseph Green’s The Decision Makers (from Galaxy), Terrestrials covet the watery world Capella G Eight, but it’s already occupied by seal-like amphibians with group intelligence though not much material culture. There is a lot more of the standard used furniture of the genre here, but at least it’s mostly done more cleverly and skillfully than dreamed of by Anvil. Anvil has written this story so often he could do it in his sleep, and most likely that is exactly what happened. Witness Christopher Anvil’s The Captive Djinn, the only selection from that rotten borough Analog, yet another story about the clever Earthman outwitting cartoonishly stupid aliens. This is not to say the pedestrian has been entirely banished. More importantly, the book as a whole is livelier than its predecessor. This year they’ve got Ellison and Lafferty, though they seem to have missed their chance at Smith, and Zelazny is still among the missing. But my main complaint last year was that too much of the material was too pedestrian, and the book excluded writers who are pushing the envelope of the genre, like Lafferty, Zelazny, Ellison, and Cordwainer Smith. Clarke’s Sunjammer, originally in Boys’ Life but quickly reprinted last year by New Worlds, and then by Amazing early this year. The only item here that did not originate in the US or UK SF magazines is Arthur C. Nor is there anything here from any of the non-specialist markets that have been publishing progressively more SF in recent years.

More precisely, if not more plausibly, “what they have lacked is the advanced sophistication now to be found in the American and British s-f magazines.” Suffice it to say that there are virtues other than “advanced sophistication” and they may often be found outside one’s own culture. There are no translated stories in this volume, unlike the first the editors claim that they read plenty of them, but them furriners just don’t cut the mustard. The editors have regrettably pulled in their horns a little on the “World” front.

This one comes with not one but two blurbs from Judith Merril, their competitor, though the editors say nothing about her anthology series, the next volume of which is due at the end of the year. Wollheim’s and Terry Carr’s World’s Best Science Fiction: 1966-second in this series-is here, so it’s time for the usual pontificating, hand-wringing, viewing with alarm, etc., as one prefers.

The Best Science Fiction of the Year 1 by Terry Carr